Wikileaks claims CIA can bypass encryption of Whatsapp, Signal, Telegram, Wiebo, Confide, Cloakman

Wikileaks claims the CIA can bypass the encryption of Whatsapp, Signal, Telegram, Wiebo, Confide and Cloakman by hacking the smart phones the applications run on. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4367746/WikiLeaks-says-CIA-disguised-hacking-Russian-activity.html#ixzz4hNrVAj3u ............................................................................ 3-7-17 By the end of 2016, the CIA's hacking division, which formally falls under the agency's Center for Cyber Intelligence (CCI), had over 5000 registered users and had produced more than a thousand hacking systems, trojans, viruses, and other "weaponized" malware. Such is the scale of the CIA's undertaking that by 2016, its hackers had utilized more code than that used to run Facebook. The CIA had created, in effect, its "own NSA" with even less accountability and without publicly answering the question as to whether such a massive budgetary spend on duplicating the capacities of a rival agency could be justified. In a statement to WikiLeaks the source details policy questions that they say urgently need to be debated in public, including whether the CIA's hacking capabilities exceed its mandated powers and the problem of public oversight of the agency. The source wishes to initiate a public debate about the security, creation, use, proliferation and democratic control of cyberweapons. Once a single cyber 'weapon' is 'loose' it can spread around the world in seconds, to be used by rival states, cyber mafia and teenage hackers alike. https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/ .............................................................................................. (Wikileaks CIA leak-file) hints at hacking capabilities that range from routers and desktop operating systems to internet-of-things devices, including one passing reference to research on hacking cars. But it seems to most thoroughly detail the CIA’s work to penetrate smartphones: One chart describes more than 25 Android hacking techniques, while another shows 14 iOS attacks.... Targeting Android, for instance, the leak references eight remote-access exploits—meaning they require no physical contact with the device—including two that target Samsung Galaxy and Nexus phones and Samsung Tab tablets. Those attacks would offer hackers an initial foothold on target devices: In three cases, the exploit descriptions reference browsers like Chrome, Opera, and Samsung’s own mobile browser, suggesting that they could be launched from maliciously crafted or infected web pages. Another 15 tools are marked “priv,” suggesting they’re “privilege escalation” attacks that expand a hacker’s access from that initial foothold to gain deeper access, in many cases the “root” privileges that suggest total control of the device. That means access to any onboard files but also the microphone, camera, and more. The iOS vulnerabilities offer more piecemeal components of a hacker tool. While one exploit offers a remote compromise of a target iPhone, the WikiLeaks documents describe the others as techniques to defeat individual layers of the iPhone’s defense. That includes the sandbox that limits applications’ access to the operating system and the security feature that randomizes where a program runs in memory to make it harder to corrupt adjacent software.... “Definitely with these exploits chained together [the CIA] could take full control of an iPhone,” says Marcello Salvati, a researcher and penetration tester at security firm Coalfire. “This is the first public evidence that’s the case.” The leak sheds some limited light on the CIA’s sources of those exploits, too. While some of the attacks are attributed to public releases by iOS researchers, and the Chinese hacker Pangu, who has developed techniques to jailbreak the iPhone to allow the installation of unauthorized apps, others are attributed to partner agencies or contractors under codenames. The remote iOS exploit is listed as “Purchased by NSA” and “Shared with CIA.” The CIA apparently purchased two other iOS tools from a contractor listed as “Baitshop,” while the Android tools are attributed to sellers codenamed Fangtooth and Anglerfish. In a tweet, NSA leaker Edward Snowden pointed to those references as “the first public evidence [the US government] is paying to keep US software unsafe.”... the Atlantic Council’s Healey says the sheer volume of the CIA’s hacking capabilities described in the WikiLeaks release took him aback nonetheless. And that volume calls into question supposed limitations on the US government’s use of zero-day exploits, like the so-called Vulnerabilities Equities Process—a White House initiative created under President Obama to ensure that security vulnerabilities found by US agencies were disclosed and patched, where possible. https://www.wired.com/2017/03/cia-can-hack-phone-pc-tv-says-wikileaks/